From The Riddick Kitchen - Meal Planning

Hey there Tuesday!!! I hope everyone had such a great weekend!! We loved our weekend in Louisville with my family. It was such a fun weekend away! Today I thought it would be fun to have a little post on how we're currently meal planning along with another little recipe for you!! 

At the beginning of January, I wrote a little post about organizing our family you can read here, and I mentioned that we love using the Reminders app. I posted this picture, and I have loved hearing from so many about a new found love for this sweet app. I also mentioned it's how Pierce and I had started meal planning this year, and today I thought it would be fun to share a little bit more about that one specifically!! 

When I introduced From The Riddick Kitchen, I shared a little about how healthy meals and ingredients are usually pretty important to us when it comes to cooking at home. Those priorities help guide/direct the recipes we make most nights. And when we applied the same principle to our meal planning, we knew we wanted something easy, sustainable and simple for both of us to add/edit/update. We came up with this little system for those reasons, and let me tell you, it's been a game changer! I know this area of life looks so different for every family, but it really has been a favorite for us.

It's the middle of March, and we've used it every week since January 1st and have loved it. It really has been easy, sustainable and simple for both us to update and edit. We love that it's an app already on our phone and something we both know and love and use often. It's also so easy to open up and check the two or three meal left for the week on a long Wednesday or Thursday. So, without further ado, here's a little look into how we have been meal planning over here!! 

At the beginning of the year, we took a trip to our favorite restaurant in town and spent some time trying to brainstorm most of the meals we love and cook often. 

We came up with a list to get us started...

While this little one waited so patiently 😂 

And later that week, we added all of the meals to our Reminders App under "Meal Prep" and marked them "completed."

After we had all of the meals in, under each meal, we added the "ingredients" we need for each meal. It looked a little like this. 

So on Saturday, when we're looking ahead for the week, we usually pick five to six recipes that we want to make for the week, and we'll "uncheck" them so they move to the top of the list. Now, it's easy to see what meals we are going to have that week. 

So, if BBQ Chicken Pizza is on the list, we will mark it "uncompleted," and it will move to the top. Then, we will "uncheck" all of the ingredients that we need from the store that week and leave the ingredients we already have checked. This makes it so easy for when we're doing our Kroger pick-up order - we just go through and add the few ingredients from each meal that we need. 

We'll place our Kroger order with all of our recipe ingredients and other groceries that we need and usually pick it up on the way home from church on Sunday. That gives us some time to make some yummy acia bowls, put Jane down for a nap, and do a little fridge reset and clean as we put away our groceries for the week. It's never perfect, but boy has it really made a difference for us this year!! Even just having a plan on how to "plan" has helped so much!! 

So there it is in a nutshell!! I'd love to hear how your family does it!!! I still have a piece of notebook paper from a month or two into marriage with one of our first "meal plans" on it, and it still makes me smile. We've done it differently throughout the years, and there have been plenty of months where I can tell you no plan was put into effect hahaha but for this season, this has been working really well for us. Thanks for letting me share it!! I can't wait to hear all of your fun tips and tricks as well!! 

Thanks for reading and I'll plan on seeing you back here tomorrow!!
Blessings, 
Tab and Pierce